Chapter 5

Olivia's POV

Having finished the last of the paperwork, I watched as Rexie said goodbye to every patient in the hallway, handshakes, bows — and then, at the doorway, turned back for one last lingering look and bellowed in that voice of hers that could cut through three walls: "Take care, everyone!"

We left there and headed for the pier to take the ferry. The wind off the East River was strong, whipping her hair into a mess. She stood at the bow, both hands gripping the railing, and shouted across toward the far bank: "Long live freedom!" The wind tore her voice to shreds, and there was no response from the opposite shore. Yet she let go of the railing with a satisfied look, turned around, and her face was bright and refreshed.

I kept my gaze fixed on the water and resolved to get this over with.

"I need a favor from you. Sell the Manhattan apartments and your shares, and turn it all into cash."

Her hands left the rail. She turned her head, and that easy lightness vanished from her face instantly, the way it always did when her internal alarm tripped — sharp, trained into her by the Corps. “What are you planning now?”

After a good deal of agonizing, I decided not to tell her yet about my rebirth.

"I had a prophetic dream. A blood-red aurora will appear in ten days, and after that comes a killing freeze, then ash rain — and when the ash rain touches a person, it turns them into monsters called Echoers. They attack anything that moves. If we want to live, we need to stockpile a lot of supplies."

Rexie burst out laughing, throwing herself back, slapping the railing with her palm so hard it thumped. "Hahaha — Olivia, what on earth happened to you these past two months? You're the one who needs to see a psychiatrist!"

“I know how it sounds,” I said. “But I’ve already sold the Long Island estate, every stock holding, the whole trust. One hundred and thirty billion dollars in assets, all turned into supplies.”

The laughter died.

Rexie stiffened again, eyes wide. “You sold off the entire Sterling family estate?”

“All of it. Grain, meat, seafood, medicine, generators, weapons and ammunition. Enough to sustain the two of us for thirty years.”

She reached over and pressed the back of her hand to my forehead with a deadpan expression, checking for a fever. She pulled her hand away and frowned. “No temperature. Olivia — do you truly believe the world is ending?”

She shifted her approach, her tone slow and measured, the kind of voice you use to speak to someone in emotional crisis. “Even if you really had some prophetic dream, it’s just your brain manufacturing hallucinations from stress. Your parents only vanished recently — you’re under immense psychological pressure.”

"Look, I behave no differently than I always have," I cut her off. "And yet my account balance dropped from thirteen billion dollars to eighty thousand. How do you explain that?"

Silence hung in the air for several seconds. Then her expression shifted once more, settling into something grave and deliberate. She said the most absurd thing I had ever heard from her: “Fine. Sign over power of attorney for whatever assets you have left, let me hold it for you, and I’ll get you the best psychiatrist in the city.”

I almost laughed.

The ferry docked. I took Rexie to my car and drove to a remote empty lot, pulled over, and killed the engine. I turned to face her. “You want proof. Alright.”

I held out my right hand. Faint red light gathered in my palm, and then the Damascus sword materialized — solid and tangible. The black serpentine patterns along the blade caught the afternoon sun, and the ruby set into the hilt glinted dark and sharp.

Rexie froze, stunned enough to forget to breathe.

I put the sword back into the space.

"It's a feature of my family's treasure vault. It can open a space where time stands still, and anything placed inside will remain in its original state forever. I can store and retrieve any item at will."

Rexie’s voice carried undisguised excitement. “So everything you said is true? You really can see the future?”

I nodded solemnly. “Either way, trust me. Everything is about to change.”

She asked no further questions. She pulled out her phone and dialed.

“Douglas.” Her tone was flat, a quality I had never heard from her before. “My shares. You buy them back at seventy cents on the dollar. The money hits my account within twenty-four hours, or I sell them to the Conrads.”

A furious voice roared from the other end of the line. She hung up immediately and called her real estate agent next. “My six Manhattan apartments. Sell all of them at a twenty percent discount, full payment required, closing finalized within twenty-four hours.”

Her father, Douglas Carter, had gritted his teeth and bought the entire stake back at seventy cents on the dollar to keep the shares out of a competitor's hands, wiring 2.1 billion into Rexie's account. The six Manhattan apartments, prime locations, sold within three days as buyers fought over them, pulling in 1.5 billion. Add her own liquid funds, and it came to 3.8 billion in total.

Rexie handed the entire sum to me and told me to decide what to buy with it. No one in this world will ever trust me the way she does.

For the next week, I took Rexie to wholesale markets across New York and several pre-vetted black market contacts. Batch after batch of supplies vanished into the spatial storage. At the black market arms dealer’s, I used cash to purchase large stockpiles of ammunition, grenades, C4, plus several AA-12 fully automatic shotguns and modified AR-15 rifles.

Rexie stopped in front of the weapon rack, running her hand over a two-handed greatsword. The blade was over 1.8 meters long and weighed 19 kilograms—an English greatsword whose scabbard alone weighed over twenty pounds.

“You sure you can swing that?”

“Effortlessly.” She lifted it with one hand without strain.

I said nothing else and watched her buy the sword.

It took us a week to spend all 3.8 billion dollars. Rexie stared at the account balance on her phone and sighed, "I've never been this broke in my life."

By the time we finished all of it, it was already September, and we could finally relax a little. Normally New York would have turned to autumn by then, but the temperature was sitting at 113 degrees. Which meant we had to keep the air conditioning running all day long.

At six thirty in the afternoon, I woke up on the sofa. I went to the window and saw the setting sun had dyed the whole sky blood red — so bright it made my eyes ache.

Rexie held a bag of chips, frowning. "This weather is seriously fucked up. You don't think this is really a sign of the end of the world, do you?"

“It is,” I said. “The end is coming.”

I stared out the window, and the brutal heat of the present pulled my mind back to old memories.

The Sterling family had centuries of history in finance and shipping, wealth vast enough that generations could not spend it all. But riches never brought only comfort. My father had been kidnapped multiple times as a child.

Because of that, my parents began training me for survival when I was three years old. Sanda, kickboxing. I remember a retired Navy SEAL instructor telling me: “If you want to learn how to fight, first you have to learn how to take a beating.”

Later, after surviving three years of the apocalypse in my past life, I had long forgotten all those fancy martial arts forms. But some lessons had etched themselves deep into my bones — the most direct, lethal strikes. Killing blows that needed no thought or judgment. My body would carry out the most efficient action automatically, as naturally as breathing.